


On Rope Swings and Avalanches

by Eternal Scribe (Shadowcat)



Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-27 10:45:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 35
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/977852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowcat/pseuds/Eternal%20Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cutter</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introductions

**Author's Note:**

> This is my personal challenge of trying to see if I can answer all of the past drabble challenges from Primeval100 on LJ and make them follow one storyline for the most part.
> 
> The title is from [this](http://www.lyricstime.com/catie-curtis-rope-swings-and-avalanches-lyrics.html) song by Catie Curtis.

As far as overall introductions went, he supposed it wasn’t all that bad. It didn’t appear that any of the team hated each other on sight. Though, when he decided that they were a team wasn’t something he could answer. 

The Professor. The Hunter. The Zoologist. The Computer Geek. The Soldier. The Public Affairs Representative. The Annoyance.

Not to mention the flying lizard from the past.

Cutter ran a hand through his hair and gave a sigh, wishing he was back in his flat with one of his bottles of the good stuff.

How did he get into these things?


	2. Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rex

He didn’t consider himself to be lost. After all, he knew right where he was. He’d flown here quite on his own, to begin with. The child took very good care of him, but when _she_ walked into the room, he knew that had found a new home. She knew how to hold him and how to talk to him and she smelled so nice.

When other people took him from Abby, he was not at all pleased.

Which was why he was quite content to fly back through the window and into his Abby’s arms when she called him.


	3. Determined

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor

There were several things in life that Connor Temple could be said to be lacking, but determination was not one of those things. After all, without determination, where would he be right when the anomaly phenomenon was happening? Stuck in a classroom listening to a dull professor say the same thing he said every year, that’s where.

Dry lecturers were no longer for Connor, no sir. He was determined to prove to Professor Cutter that having him on the team was a work of total genius.

If he also got a date with Abby, well that was just a bonus.


	4. Rex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rex

He liked the rinds of melons when they still had a little bit of the juicy fruit on them the best. He wasn’t all that fond of spinach, but Abby said it would help him stay strong. Carrots were nice and crunchy and he liked seeing how far he could sling them. He had learned the hard way not to eat Claudia’s roses – no matter how good they smelled. Potatoes were really good, but there was one food he loved above them all.

There was nothing he loved more than chocolate biscuits.

He’d behave for Lester for a chocolate biscuit.


	5. Moonlight and Forgotten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abby

She had gone to the one place that she knew no one would think of to look for her. 

The zoo was still her refuge, her place that she buried herself when she was too pained to take the chance of being around others. She would climb one of the trees in the elephant pen and watch the moon, trying to get herself centered.

The moonlight didn’t offer the balm to her emotions it usually did. 

She hadn’t thought that anything could hurt her ever again, but the fact that Stephen had forgotten he’d asked her out hurt like hell.


	6. In The Bedroom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen

As he lay in bed, there was something in his mind that he was having a hard time grasping. It was a fleeting image, a snippet of conversation. However, the more he tried to grab it and remember, the more it would elude him and the headache would get worse.

The doctors had told him that it was normal to have some memory loss with the amount of poison that had been in his system. Knowing it was normal did nothing to make him any more pleased with it. His memory was something he took a lot of pride in.


	7. Betrayal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen and Alison

“Who is she?”

Stephen turned his head on the pillow to look at Allison. “What?”

“The girl you were talking in your sleep about.” 

Allison’s voice was surprisingly calm, even if Stephen was suddenly as far from calm as he could be.

“Allison I don’t –“

“Abby,” she said, getting up and pulling on her clothing. “You kept calling for someone named Abby and told her that you’d make her breakfast if she stayed.”

“Abby.” Stephen suddenly groaned and dropped his head into his hands. “Allison –“

“Don’t. Betrayal hurts a lot more when you’re on the receiving end, Stephen.”


	8. The Forest of Dean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cutter and Stephen

“Why do you think she’s doing this?” Cutter asked quietly as he and Stephen re-walked the first site to make sure it hadn’t opened again when they weren’t paying attention.

“Pretending to be dead or popping in and out of our lives like one of those annoying toys?”

Cutter smirked at the description. “Helen would no doubt be put out by that comparison.”

Stephen shrugged. “She cheated on you, faked her death and then left me in that underground tunnel to die. I don’t give a damn what she thinks.”

“The Forest of Dean – where everything goes to bloody Hell.”


	9. Star Wars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cutter and Stephen

Stephen laughed quietly. “I wouldn’t say that we’re in hell, exactly, Nick. There are a lot worse places we could be, you know.”

“We could both be dead,” Cutter said cheerfully. “Or stuck in the office with Lester. Man gives the term _pain in the ass_ a whole new meaning.”

“He’s a bureaucrat. They always get you riled up.”

“He’s even worse than most.”

Stephen shook his head. “You could always turn Connor loose on him.”

“Would serve him right to listen to a lengthy dissertation about how the anomalies could become the setting of a real life _Star Wars_.”


	10. "Claudia Who?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cutter and Stephen

“So what’s going on between you and Claudia?” Stephen asked after a few minutes of silence.

“Claudia who?” Cutter said, not meeting Stephen’s eyes.

“Connor wouldn’t even believe that and he’s the most clueless when it comes to reading people on this bizarre team we suddenly have.” Stephen stopped and put a hand on Cutter’s arm. “Truthfully, tell me what’s happened.”

Cutter let out a snort. “She thinks I purposefully kept Helen’s reappearance a secret from her for whatever reason.”

“You didn’t exactly tell anyone she was back.”

“Because I thought I was losing what was left of my mind.”


	11. Surprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cutter and Claudia

Cutter felt like a complete moron as he stood at the door. He hadn’t yet knocked and he had been standing here for at least ten minutes. He looked down at the bottles he was holding, then over his shoulder to the street. 

Stephen was of the opinion that Cutter needed to approach Claudia about why he hadn’t told anyone about Helen reappearing in their lives. He should have told Stephen to shove his opinion.

He’d decided to go back to his own flat when the door opened and Claudia stared at him.

“Cutter.”

“Hello, Claudia. Care for a drink?”


	12. Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen and Connor

“I wonder what they’re doing now.”

Stephen looked up from the map he was studying. “Excuse me?”

“Cutter and Claudia.”

“I don’t see how it’s any of our business,” Stephen said dryly.

“It is,” Connor insisted. “If things go badly, we’re the ones that have to work with them and them being all snippy and awkward with each other.”

“I imagine that by now, Claudia has gotten Cutter pissed enough that he won’t make an ass out of himself and they’re shagging on her sofa.”

Connor’s jaw dropped. “They wouldn’t.”

Sometimes Stephen found it too easy to mess with Connor.


	13. Camping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cutter and Connor

“No.”

“It’ll be fun.”

“For who?”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “For all of us.”

“And how do you plan to convince Lester that any of this is a good idea?”

“He’ll be happy to get all of us out of his hair for a day,” Connor said as he came around the corner and closed his mobile. He grinned at Cutter. “And as long as we take soldier boy –“

“Captain Ryan.”

“—Ryan with us, we’ll be within safety protocols.”

“Camping out at an anomaly site. Claudia will be thrilled, I’m sure.” Cutter sighed.


	14. A Quiet Night In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claudia and Cutter

“How did we manage to get so lucky?”

Cutter looked up from where he was laying on the floor with his back against the sofa next to Claudia’s legs. “How do you mean?”

“You and I, having some time alone. I was beginning to think that that was never going to happen and Connor has been acting like an annoying chaperone at times.”

“He thinks you’re going to rob me of my virtue.” Somehow, Cutter kept a straight face when he made that comment.

“Poor Connor lives in denial.” Claudia’s smile was sharp. “You traded your virtue away a long time ago.”


	15. Oops

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claudia and Cutter

“Och, now why would you say something like that to innocent little me?” Cutter was trying not to smile as he turned to Claudia.

“The first time you found an interesting fossil that wasn’t walking around at your universities or found something that resembled proof of the way certain ways of life evolved, you gave away your precious virtue in order to gain more information about the science it what you were finding.”

“I didn’t realize that you were beginning to know me so well.”

“I file all of these tidbits of information that you let slip each day.”

“Oops.”


	16. This Is Where You Duck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claudia and Cutter

“I’m not sure how I should take the idea of you filing away bits of information about me.”

Claudia laughed. “That tends to be how us women learn things about you men. Most of you blokes don’t talk much and when you do, you pretty much talk to girls like we’re one of you men. Sometimes, that’s a good thing. At other times, we would really like to be treated like the girls that we are.”

“Women are like a completely different species from men. You just don’t make sense sometimes.”

Cutter ducked as Claudia took a swing at him.


	17. Chat-Up Lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cutter and Connor

Cutter thought the whole thing was more than a little amusing. At least, it was amusing as hell to him.

His best mate was involved in a bit of a challenge with Claudia’s best mate, Captain Ryan.

The prize in this bit of male posturing seemed to be the tiny blonde zoologist, Abby. 

He did notice that Connor wasn’t at all happy about this attention towards Abby that was going on. He was a great deal disinclined to wish Stephen well .

“He can’t just chat her up when he forgot all about it the last time he asked her out.”


	18. T-Rex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Team

They all recognized the sound coming through the anomaly and all of the squabbling that had been going on seconds ago came to a close. Claudia patched in with Lester while Ryan and his men set about making a safety perimeter. Stephen unlocked his box in the truck and started passing weapons to Abby and Cutter. Connor got to where they thought would be a safe space to pull up the specifics on the T-Rex that had poked its nose through the anomaly.

“Connor!” Claudia demanded. “How do we send it back through the anomaly?”

“Patience is a virtue, Claudia.”


	19. Abby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team

“Connor, come on,” Claudia yelled out as more of the dinosaur came through the anomaly.

“Abby, if he doesn’t find a non-lethal way for us to drive it back through, we’re going to have use deadly force,” Stephen warned the little blonde. He knew that she didn’t like the idea of having to kill any of the creatures they came in contact with.

Abby didn’t hear the warning because she was in the wrong place when the first leg stepped out of the anomaly and knocked Abby to the side, slamming her into the ground.

Ryan and Stephen opened fire.


	20. Chocolate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abby and Claudia

Abby came to and quickly closed her eyes against the glare. She felt rather than heard the blinds being closed somewhere and then there was a mug of something warm pressed into her hands. She opened her eyes again and saw that the room was a lot dimmer than they had been the first time she had come to.

“Drink it,” Claudia murmured. “It’s hot chocolate with more than a little bit of whiskey. It will make you feel better. Well, as much as it could.”

“I can handle chocolate as a medicine.”

“No more playing football with dinosaurs, Abby.”


	21. Devastation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cutter and Abby

“Abby.”

Abby shook her head, not looking at Cutter as she stared out over the landscape. She couldn’t believe that only a few days ago, this place had been alive with the sound of a T-Rex and its prey. Now there was only silence.

“Abby, we have to go.”

She nodded, finally, and turned to look at Cutter. The tears on her cheeks made the older man reach out to hug her. “What could have caused so much devastation so quickly? We were just here.”

“Volcanoes?” Cutter suggested. “Massive earthquakes? I don’t know, but history … it could have been anything.”


	22. Ryan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain Ryan

He let some of the tension ease from his body when Cutter and Abby turned back towards the anomaly and stepped through it. Like Abby he had been stunned to see the changes that had happened within the few days since they had sent the T-Rex roaring back through the anomaly. The guards he had posted hadn’t reported hearing anything more unusual than they’d all already heard from the anomaly, so no one had been prepared to see everything leveled. Following his charges back into their own time, Captain Ryan would be happy never to step foot through another anomaly.


	23. Bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lester

The next time his house needed fumigating or something repaired, he was definitely never going to let anything of the sort slip out at the office. He would have been quite happy getting a room somewhere, but that sent both Claudia and Abby into fits of what he could only deduce was some bout of hysteria that was reserved only for women.

Thus, he was in a bed in Cutter’s spare room. Far from being restful, the room was a study in chaos with skeletons and fossils on every available wall surface.

It explained Cutter’s mental state he was sure.


	24. Pollen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen and Abby

This had Bad Idea written all over it.

It wasn’t that Abby wasn’t beautiful. Stephen had been all too aware of her for months. It was just that this was not the way he had planned on having her in his flat.

However, since Abby and Claudia had been coated with the strange pollen, Cutter and Stephen had been tasked with taking care of them until it wore off since they supposedly had the most scientific knowledge about extinct worlds.

Stephen was pretty sure that neither he nor Cutter had ever studied anything that released sex pollen into the air.


	25. Camouflage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lester, Cutter, Stephen and Ryan

“What exactly are the two of you doing? What the devil is on your faces?!”

Of course. Of course Lester would be the one that found them. Since it was _his_ office, it should have been expected.

“Hiding.”

Lester raised his eyebrow at Cutter’s terse response. “I wasn’t aware there had been a creature incursion here in our building.”

Stephen clenched his jaw. “We’re hiding from Claudia and Abby.”

Ryan was having a hard time keeping a straight face at the camouflage paint on the faces of the other two men. “The pollen hasn’t worn off the girls.”

“I see.”


	26. Dining Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom, Connor and Duncan

“You’re either the nicest bloke ever or a liar.”

Connor glared at his friend, Tom, over his pizza. “Why do you say that?”

Tom shrugged. “You’re studying or something with that incredibly hot blond we saw you with and you have yet to tell us anything about her at all.”

“We’re friends,” Connor said. “That’s it.”

“Girls that look like her don’t have friends that look like us.”

Connor stood and dropped his money on the table. “That’s for my share of the pizza, I’m going home.”

Duncan looked at Tom after Connor left. “I call dibs on his half.”


	27. Halloween

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen and Connor

“Not going to happen.”

“It would be a lot of fun and we could all use some of that as of late.”

Stephen pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering how he was the only one that was around right now.

“Connor, the girls are still embarrassed because of the pollen incident and I highly doubt either one of them is up for parading about in costumes any time soon.”

“Abby would look really good in Princess Leia’s slave girl costume from Star Wars…”

“And I’ll make sure you get a nice funeral after she kills you for the suggestion.”


	28. Humility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryan and Connor

“You do realize that she’s going to kill you in your sleep, right?”

Connor turned to look at Ryan. “What?”

“In fact, she may not even wait until you’re sleeping,” the Captain continued. He shook his head as he looked at the office that Connor had spread all of the gadgets throughout. “I’ve never worked with her, but she is Lester’s assistant.”

“You’re worrying over nothing, mate,” Connor grinned. “I just made Lorraine’s office a hundred times better. She now has access to everything right at her fingertips thanks to me.”

“You’ve never even heard of humility, have you, Temple?”


	29. Kindness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cutter, Stephen and Lorraine

“I don’t know whether to be impressed or dismayed or both.”

Stephen shook his head. “When it comes to the girls, I never know what to think.”

“Where did they get a cake like that; who did the frosting?”

“Nick, those may be questions for the ages that we don’t want the answers to. When Claudia and Abby put their heads together…”

“A suit-shaped cake with… pinstripe frosting? How is that even… it’s not natural!”

“It’s Lester’s birthday and they wanted to do something special for him,” Lorraine, Lester’s assistant supplied.

Truly, it was a kindness Lester had never expected.


	30. Forgiveness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cutter and Stephen

“You ever going to forgive us?”

Cutter looked up from where he had been staring mournfully into an empty glass. “I don’t see as how you’re the one that needs forgiving. It’s not like her announcement was all that surprising.” Stephen’s hand jerked from where he’d been refilling Cutter’s glass. “Now look, you’ve spilled it, you sod.”

“Sorry, my brain got stuck on the fact that you weren’t surprised.”

“I was married to her, Stephen,” Cutter said after he took a drink. “You weren’t the first of my students that she seduced.”

“But I was your best friend.”

“Still are.”


	31. Diligence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lester

It was very hard to continue to take orders from a Suit who had no idea what was really going on. 

Yet, once again, he was in this office, being dressed down by The Minister and doing his best to keep his face bland and his temper in check. Keeping this man happy meant that his team got whatever toys and weapons they needed in order to keep themselves and each other safe.

His diligence and his ability to make it seem like he was fawning kept his people alive.

Even if they would never know they were his people.


	32. Charity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lester and Claudia

“She named her…” Lester’s expression was as bland as he could make it. “What was that, exactly?”

“Charity,” Claudia repeated for the third time.

Lester was certain he was getting a migraine – not that he had ever had one, but there was indeed a first time for everything.

“She always seemed so sensible. What has being around those people done to my damn assistant?”

“I don’t know they did anything,” Claudia said patiently. “The fact of the matter is that Lorraine now has a baby pterodactyl in her office named Charity and you’re going to have to deal with it.”


	33. Christmas Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claudia and Cutter

There surely had never been a tree quite like this one.

Connor had insisted that they have a holiday tree and because he was the one who brought up the idea, he was the one in charge of decorating it.

Claudia wasn't quite sure what she was looking at. The tree in front of them was haphazardly draped with tinsel and fossil bones and...

"How on earth did he find a strand of UFO lights large enough to wrap around the tree?"

Cutter shook his head. "I don't want to know and you probably don't really want to know, either."


	34. Mistletoe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lester and Connor

"Take it down. Now."

"But it's tradition."

"It's not everyone's tradition and it doesn't need to be hung up in the office," Lester said firmly. "Take it down. And take the other bunches you've tried to hide in other doorways, as well."

"It's part of Christmas!"

"No, it's part of some courtship ritual that was tacked onto the Christmas holidays by someone a long time ago as an excuse to kiss."

Connor blinked at the other man. Before he could comment, Lester continued.

"I don't have the patience to find another computer person when Stephen flattens you for kissing Abby."


	35. New Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen and Abby

They stood together, looking over the city lights below them. His arms were wrapped loosely around her waist and she was leaning against him. Up here on the balcony, they could believe that they were in their own little world and the events of the past few months never happened.

“You showing up at my door this evening was the one thing that made this day perfect,” he murmured into her hair. “I didn’t think I would ever get this chance.”

“It’s a new year, Stephen,” Abby said softly. “We both deserve a new beginning to start this year out.”


End file.
